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Eyes on the Prize Oral History Project

Nearly two decades after its 1987 premiere, the groundbreaking series Eyes on the Prize comes to UNC-TV from American Experience in three, two-hour episodes airing on consecutive Mondays, October 2-16, at 9 PM. Winner of numerous Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, an International Documentary Award and a Television Critics Association Award, Eyes on the Prize is the most critically-acclaimed documentary on Civil Rights in America.

This landmark series, narrated by political leader and civil rights activist Julian Bond, tells the definitive story of the Civil Rights era from the point of view of ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today.

Through contemporary interviews and historical footage, each hour-long Eyes on the Prize episode exploring America’s “Civil Rights Years”(1954 – 1965) traces the Movement from the Montgomery bus boycott to the Voting Rights Act; from community power in schools to "Black Power" in the streets; from early acts of individual courage through to the flowering of a mass movement and its eventual split into factions.